This is a detailed response to the claim that there are many parallel pagan
gods and "crucified saviors" that rival Christianity's founder
Jesus Christ. All the pagan names linked above appear in a scrolling background graphic of the DVD
"The God Who Wasn't There"
produced by amateur filmmaker and former fundamentalist Brian Flemming.

The DVD makes two major anti-Christian assertions: (1) Jesus of
Nazareth didn't exist as a person in history (also called "mythicism");
and (2) the events of Christ's life in the Gospels were copied from
"previous saviors" of non-Christian pagan religions.
This article (Part 1) will answer the second claim; Part
2 will answer the first on historicity and the reliability of
the New Testament. As a Catholic, those are the claims that interest me
and matter to historical Christianity. Flemming's commentary dealing
with his past Protestant fundamentalism, dispensationalism (the
"Rapture"), Mel Gibson's bloody Passion of the Christ,
statements from evangelical pentecostal preachers and the
so-called "Religious/Christian right" while sometimes
interesting, are irrelevant to historical Christianty, so I will ignore those.

Overlaying the background graphic
is a scrolling list of "Some Attributes of Previous Saviors":

Born of virgin on December 25;

Stars appeared at their births;

visited by Magi from the east;

turned water into wine;

healed the sick;

cast out demons;

performed miracles;

transfigured before followers;

rode donkeys into the city;

betrayed for 30 pieces of silver;

celebrated communal meal with bread and wine;

which represented the savior's flesh and blood;

killed on a cross or tree;

descended into hell;

resurrected on third day;

ascended into heaven;

to forever sit beside Father God and become Divine Judge.

The argument is that since these same things are reported about deities of
rival religions that pre-date the Christian religion (we'll see below
that few if any even make such claims), therefore the New Testament and
historical Christianity simply "copied" these
elements from the non-Christian pagan religions. Other sources that make
this argument are the infamous 19th century "freethought" tome The World's Sixteen
Crucified Saviors by Kersey Graves (discussed below) and The
Christ Conspiracy (1999) by Acharya S both published by Adventures
Unlimited Press (who also has books on UFOs and the "Lost
City" of Atlantis).

In this article we'll examine nine general criteria for
Christian parallels and put a green check (
for Yes) or red x (
for No) or question mark (for
unknown) where appropriate. I've combined a few of Flemming's
"attributes" into one ("performed miracles"), and
ignored others ("rode donkeys into the city") since they are
not as crucial, or there is no evidence for them in "previous
saviors." The December 25th date is not in the Gospels and was
adopted later by the Church (see a brief history of
Christmas and Santa Claus) so I'll ignore that one as well.

I'll try to be as fair and objective as possible
using standard scholarly sources (see my sources and
links below). There is not an attempt in Part 1 to prove the
validity of miracles or the historicity of these
gods (although see Part 2: The Evidence for Jesus).
This is merely reporting what the historical sources and religious
documentation actually state about these pagan gods, religions, and
myths. So for Jesus Christ from the New Testament we have the following :

Virgin Born?

Yes.

A
"Son of God" ?

Yes.

A
Savior?

Yes.

Performed
miracles?

Yes.

Communal
Meal of Bread/Wine?

Yes.

Crucified?

Yes.

Resurrected?

Yes.

Ascended
/ Descended ?

Yes.

Divine
Judge?

Yes.

The prominent three "parallel pagan" gods appear to be Dionysos (spelled Dionysis
or Dionysus in the DVD),
Mithras, and Osiris
so I want to pay special attention to these three. They are
mentioned in short interview clips with unsuspecting Christians leaving
a Billy Graham crusade. "Have you heard of Osiris, or Mithras, or
Dionysos?" (hear
MP3 clip) with the common answer being "No" since most Christians,
indeed your average person off the street, and even most well-read skeptics and atheists are unfamiliar
with Greek, Roman, Persian or Egyptian religions and deities. So the
argument goes: All of
these gods and religions are based on myths, fables, or legends; Jesus is on par with Dionysos, Mithras, and
Osiris.

If one has
taken a mythology or comparative religions or humanities class
these gods would be talked about. However, the information on them is
readily available in any scholarly encyclopedia. My main source is going to be the multi-volume The Encyclopedia of
Religion (1987) edited by Mircea Eliade (see also the 2005, second
edition edited by Lindsay Jones). Please visit your local public or
university library for the relevant scholarship; it's probably best to
avoid web sites at this point when you need historically accurate material produced by reputable scholars. In this
"information age" where everything and anything is available with the click of a mouse,
including extremely bad and bogus
"research," one needs to
check sources and credentials very carefully to separate the "wheat" from
the "chaff" (Matt 3:12; Luke 3:17). To repeat what skeptic Richard
Carrier says in the DVD:

"You'll have someone make up a fake quote, or misrepresent a document, misrepresent the evidence. Then they'll put it on a
web site, or put it in a book that's published by what people think is a respectable publisher. And then hundreds, thousands
of Christians will read this and believe it because they assume, well this guy wouldn't lie. He wouldn't have made this stuff up. And so they go and repeat it. And so you get the lie repeated many times, mostly
by people who aren't lying, who really do think it's true but just didn't check." (Richard Carrier from "The God Who Wasn't There" DVD)

Unfortunately for Brian Flemming and his DVD, I've checked. And I
wish more people would.

This "parallel pagan" argument or "copycat"
thesis is found on a number of web sites critical of Christianity (mainly
hyper-skeptical or atheist sites), and
several Christian apologetics responses are available as well (see sources and links
below). One of the early "sources" of this argument
is the 19th century pseudo-historical work of Kersey Graves The
World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (35 pagan gods or religious leaders are
listed in chapter 1, several of them overlapping Flemming's list) :

"These have all received divine honors, have nearly all been worshiped as Gods, or sons
of God; were mostly incarnated as Christs, Saviors, Messiahs, or Mediators; not a few of
them were reputedly born of virgins; some of them filling a character almost identical
with that ascribed by the Christian's bible to Jesus Christ; many of them, like him, are
reported to have been crucified; and all of them, taken together, furnish a prototype and
parallel for nearly every important incident and wonder-inciting miracle, doctrine and
precept recorded in the New Testament, of the Christian's Savior. Surely, with so many
Saviors the world cannot, or should not, be lost." (Kersey Graves,
chapter 1 "Rival Claims of the Saviors"
also here)

Apparently Kersey Graves himself accepted the historicity of Jesus
Christ (unlike Flemming's DVD); he was not a strict "mythicist":

"....Graves's hypothesis [is] that these various godmen were all 'historical personages' who patterned themselves after this
archetype...." and "....[Graves] was an evermerist, i.e. one who believes that these various crucified saviors and godmen were 'real people' who were deified with fairytales and myths added to their biographies. He was therefore not a
mythicist...." (pages 1, 7 of The World's Sixteen Crucified
Saviors, in the forward by Acharya S from the Adventures Unlimited
Press edition, 2001; see also his chapter 15 "The Saviors are
Real Personages").

It should be noted that professional skeptic and historian Richard
Carrier (featured in Flemming's DVD) has disavowed
Kersey Graves as a reliable source and doesn't think much of the "parallel pagan" gods in Flemming's
list. The
supposed "parallels" either post-date Christianity's founding,
or there is no good historical evidence in support of the
"copycat" idea, or the "parallel" is simply
mistaken. (Carrier suggests two more promising candidates -- Inanna
or Ishtar of the Sumerians, and Zalmoxis of the Thracians -- not mentioned by Flemming).

"The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Or Christianity Before Christ is unreliable, but no comprehensive critique exists. Most scholars immediately recognize many of his findings as unsupported and dismiss Graves as useless. After all, a scholar who rarely cites a source isn't useful to have as a reference even if he is
right....In general, even when the evidence is real, it often only appears many years after Christianity began, and thus might be evidence of diffusion in the other direction."
(Richard Carrier, Kersey
Graves and the World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors)

Brian Flemming has agreed "Kersey
Graves is full of crap" (see Beddru) and
says he will produce a "second edition" of the DVD with the
unreliable material and errors removed. While Flemming rejects the idea
his DVD has anything to do with Kersey Graves' book, nevertheless the
pagan parallel thesis is the same: "Just like the other
savior gods of the time, Paul's Christ Jesus died, rose, and ascended
all in a mythical realm." (Flemming from "The God Who
Wasn't There" DVD, followed by a quote from Hebrews 8:4 which will
be discussed in Part 2). And
Robert Price from the DVD: "There are other similar savior
figures in the same neighborhood, at the same time in history: Mithras,
Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, and so forth. And nobody thinks that
these characters are anything but mythical. And their stories are so
similar, most of them in fact having some kind of resurrection or
another...."

The assertion made by skeptics is that the story of Jesus found in
the New Testament is patterned after the alleged "dying and
rising gods" of antiquity that existed long before Christianity.
This view became popular among scholars during the so-called "history
of religions" school at the turn of the 20th century. The category of "dying and rising gods," along with the pattern of its
mythic and ritual associations, received its earliest full formulation
in the influential work of James G. Frazer The Golden Bough (1st
edition 1890 in two volumes, 2nd edition 1900 in three volumes, 3rd
edition in 12 volumes, 1906-1915, with an abridged one-volume edition
published in 1922). This theme was repeated by other scholars of
mythology such as Joseph Campbell who edited Pagan and Christian
Mysteries (1955), and his more famous The Hero with a Thousand
Faces (originally 1949), whose views were made popular through a 1988
PBS series "The Power of Myth" interviews with Bill Moyers. However, on the "dying and rising gods" motif the Encyclopedia
of Religion (1987) concludes:

"The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of
scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a
misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or
highly ambiguous texts....In
most cases, the decipherment and interpretation of texts in the
language native to the deity's cult has led to questions as to the
applicability of the category. The majority of evidence for Near
Eastern dying and rising deities occurs in Greek and Latin texts of
late antiquity, usually post-Christian in date." ("Dying and
Rising Gods", volume 4, pages 521, 522 article by Jonathan Z.
Smith, from The Encyclopedia of
Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, emphasis added)

Smith is emphatic: "Some of these divine figures simply
disappear, some disappear only to return again in the near or distant
future; some disappear and reappear with monotonous frequency. All the
deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of dying and
rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger classes of
disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case, the deities
return but have not died; in the second case, the gods die but do not
return. There is no unambiguous instance in the history of religions
of a dying and rising deity." (volume 4, page 521-522, emphasis
added)

Boyd/Eddy state in The Jesus Legend: "While the claim
that aspects of the Christian view of Jesus parallel, even are indebted
to, ancient pagan legends and myths has a long history, it gained
prominence with the birth of the history of religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche
Schule) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....The
history of religions school was extremely popular in academic circles
for several decades, but owing to trenchant critiques by such scholars
as Samuel Cheetham, H.A.A. Kennedy, J. Gresham Machen, A.D. Nock, Bruce
Metzger, and Gunter Wagner, it eventually fell out of fashion." (The
Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic
Jesus Tradition [Baker Academic, 2007], pages 134,136).

Although the category was largely abandoned by most reputable scholars and historians
by the
mid-20th century, there are exceptions. Tryggve N. D. Mettinger of Lund
University in Sweden, wrote a recent
(2001) scholarly critique challenging the
modern consensus and attempts to "resurrect" the dying and
rising theme. He nonetheless admits:

"There is now what amounts to a
scholarly consensus against the appropriateness of the concept [of dying
and rising gods]. Those who still think differently are looked upon as
residual members of an almost extinct species....The situation during
the last half of the century was thus one when it seemed fairly clear
that there were no ideas of resurrection connected with Dumuzi / Tammuz,
and that the ideas of a resurrection in connection with Adonis are very
late. The references to a resurrection of Adonis have been dated mainly
to the Christian Era....Frazer's category was broad and all
encompassing. To Frazer, Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis were all
deities of the same basic type, manifesting the yearly decay and revival
of life. He explicitly identified Tammuz and Adonis. The category of
dying and rising deities as propagated by Frazer can no longer be
upheld." (T.N.D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection:
"Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East [2001],
page 7, 40, 41)

The category is still revived among the hyper-skeptical
and "freethought" community (sometimes in the reckless non-scholarly form of Kersey Graves, sometimes in the revised James G.
Frazer The Golden Bough form) as a supposed valid argument against historical Christianity.
Evangelical author Ronald Nash has a book-length
reply to these claims titled The Gospel and The Greeks: Did the New
Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? (P & R, 1992, 2003 2nd
edition). Nash examines in detail Hellenistic philosophy, the mystery
religions, and Gnosticism and their relationship to early Christianity. He
concludes:

"Was first-century Christianity a syncretistic religion? Was
early Christianity a synthesis of ideas and practices borrowed from
different sources, some of them pagan? To the extent that key words
like dependence, influence, accommodation, and borrowed
are understood in a strong sense, my answer to this question will be
an unequivocal no." (Ronald Nash, page 10)

In chapters 7 through 11 he examines the various
Greco-Roman mystery religions and such pagan deities as Demeter,
Dionysos / Bacchus, Orpheus, Isis / Osiris, Cybele / Attis, Mithra,
Mithraism, and Zoroastrianism, etc. along with their supposed influence
on the Christian sacraments and essential Christian beliefs (the
Incarnation, life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ). I highly recommend this book as a
thorough Christian reply to the "parallel pagan" argument or
"copycat" thesis. For a summary, see my Conclusion:
Christianity versus Pagan "Mystery" Religions.

Below are the various pagan gods on Flemming's list with information about their places of origin, their births, their lives,
circumstances surrounding their deaths (if applicable) and their supposed
"resurrections" or "ascensions" (if applicable).
The mythological character of these pagan gods and religions will
be contrasted with the historical character of Christianity and
Christ in Part 2: The Evidence for Jesus.

In classical studies, Adonis has been interpreted as a Greek symbol of the seasonality of vegetable life, the death of plants during cold, and their revival during spring. Despite an original Semitic provenance, there is no native mythology; what we know depends on later Greek, Roman, and Christian interpretations.
There are two major forms of the myth: the "Panyasisian" form, and the more familiar "Ovidian" form.

The first form knows only of a quarrel between two goddesses, Aphrodite and Persephone, for the affections of the infant Adonis. The extant myth depicts Adonis being born from an incestuous union between Cinyras and his daughter Smyrna, who is turned into a myrrh tree from which Adonis is born. Zeus or Calliope decrees Adonis should spend part of the year in the
upper-world with Aphrodite, and part in the lower-world with Persephone. This tradition of "bilocation" has no suggestion of death and rebirth, and the first form lacks an account of Adonis' death.

The second form has Adonis dying in a field of lettuce, by Ares disguised as a boar, and his commemoration by Aphrodite in a flower that perpetuates his memory. There is no suggestion of Adonis rising.

Combining the two forms, Adonis' alteration between the upper and lower worlds precedes his death.

Only late texts, largely influenced by Christians, claim a subsequent day of celebration for Adonis having been raised from the dead. The earliest of these is alleged to be the 2nd century
AD ambiguous report of Lucian (Syrian Goddess 6-7) that, on the "third day" of the ritual, a statue of Adonis is "brought out into the light" and "addressed as if alive." The practice of addressing a statue "as if alive" is no proof of belief in resurrection since it is a common presupposition of any Mediterranean cultic activity that uses images. Lucian reports after the "address" the women cut their hair as a sign of mourning.

Considerably later, Christian writers Origen (c. 3rd century AD) and Jerome (c. 4th
and 5th century AD), commenting on Ezekiel 8:14, and Cyril of Alexandria (c.
4th and 5th century AD) and Procopius of Gaza (c. 5th and 6th century
AD), commenting on Isaiah 18:1, clearly report joyous festivities on the
"third day" to celebrate Adonis (wrongly identified as Tammuz) having been "raised from the dead." Whether this represents a later Christian interpretation, or a late third- and fourth-century developed form of the Adonis cult as a dying and rising mythology in imitation of the Christian story, cannot be determined.

The frequently cited "gardens of Adonis" (the kepoi) were proverbial illustrations of the transitory nature of life and contain no hint of rebirth. There is no evidence for the existence of any mysteries of Adonis where a member of the cult was identified with Adonis or his fate.

(Sources: see "Adonis" and
"Dying and Rising Gods" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and Drudgery Divine by Jonathan Z. Smith, page 101).

Cybele is a goddess, probably of Oriental origin, known in the Greek
world from approximately the seventh century BC. She became known in
Rome as Magna Mater ("great mother of the gods") when her cult
was imported to the city at the end of the third century BC. She is
also known under variants Cybebe, Cybelis, and at Locri in Italy, Cybala.
Cybele was adopted as goddess by the Phrygians who established her
central cult in Pessinus. From Phrygia the cult probably passed to
Sardis, capital of the kingdom of Lydia, and to Hellenic cities of Asia
Minor and Europe. In several places, the cult of Cybele was combined
with that of Attis (sometimes spelled Attys or Atys). In the picture (right), Cybele is depicted next to her lover Attis. She holds a tympanum and a staff. Next to her is her sacred animal the lion. The fact that Attis is shown as equal in size to Cybele suggests that in this case he was being worshipped as a god in his own right. Usually, humans appear smaller than gods in such
reliefs (c. 230 BC, discovered in a Greek city in Italy, now in Venice Museo
Archeologico).

From a distinction originally made by Hugo Hepding (1903), there is a
"Lydian" version of the Attis myth that is marked by his killing
by a boar; and a "Phrygian" version that ends with his
castration and death. In the latter version, the sources in
chronological order are Ovid, Pausanias, and Arnobius. In the account by
Ovid, Attis is a beautiful Phrygian youth who consecrates himself to
Cybele but then betrays her with the tree-nymph Sagaritis who dies from
blows inflicted on her tree by the goddess. Attis is driven mad
and finally emasculates himself. In one variation he is transformed into
a pine-tree (Ovid in Metamorph X vv. 103-105); in another he is
killed by a pine tree (Ibis, vv. 505-506, see Lancellotti,
page 2, note 4). In the Arnobius version (Adv nat V, 5-7), Attis
castrates himself under a pine tree. In no sense is this a death
by "crucifixion" on a pine-tree. Attis' death is from loss of blood by his own castration.

In this longer Arnobius version, Attis' mother is Nana, the daughter
of King Sangarius. She became pregnant and conceived Attis from a pomegranate fruit produced
from the blood of Agdistis the fierce hunter, after an attempt by Liber to
kill him. Endowed with extraordinary beauty, Attis
became the favorite of Cybele along with Agdistis, both who were born
from a huge rock called "Agdos." Attis dies from castration
and the longer story ends like this:

"The Mother of the gods also shed bitter tears from which an
almond tree sprang up, and then she took the sacred pine-tree, under
which Attis had emasculated himself, into her den and joined the
funeral laments of Agdistis, smiting her breasts and walking around
the trunk of the tree. Agdistis begged Jupiter [or Zeus] to bring Attis
back to life (revivisceret), but that was not permitted.
Instead the god agreed that the body of Attis should not putrefy, that
his hair should always grow and that his little finger should move for
eternity. Satisfied with these favours, Agdistis consecrated the dead
man's body to Pessinous and honoured him with yearly ceremonies and
priestly services." (Lancellotti, page 4-5)

The complex mythology of Attis is irrelevant to the question of dying
and rising deities. In the Phrygian version, Attis is killed by
castration; in the Lydian version, he is killed by a boar. In neither
case is there any question of his returning to life. Two late, post-Christian
theological reflections on the myth hint at rebirth: the allegory in Naassene
Sermon and the "euhemerist" account in Firmacus Maternus
(third book of De errore profanarum religionum from the fourth
century AD), in which a pretended resurrection is mentioned, although
it is doubtful this ever played any part in the actual cult.

The attempts in the earlier scholarly literature to identify Attis as
a "dying and rising deity" depend not on the mythology but
rather on the ritual of the five-day festival of Cybele on March 22-27.
Some scholars saw the "Day of Blood" (March 24) and the
"Day of Joy" (March 25) as an analogy of the Christian
relationship between Good Friday to Easter Sunday, and reasoned that if
there was "mourning" on the first day, the object of the
"joy" on the following day must be Attis'
"resurrection." But there is no evidence this is the
case. The Day of Joy is a late addition to what was once a three-day
ritual in which the Day of Blood was followed by a purificatory ritual
and the return of the statue of the goddess to the temple. The Day of
Joy in the cult celebrated Cybele, not Attis.

The sole text that connects the Day of Joy with Attis is a
fifth-century AD biography of Isidore the Dialectician by the
Neoplatonic philosopher Damascius who reports that Isidore once had a
dream in which he was Attis and the Day of Joy was celebrated in his
honor!

The ritual of the taurobolium (bull slaying) came to be
associated with this cult at least from the second century AD and was
frequently performed as an explicit homage to the emperor. At least in
the fourth century AD the taurobolium was a kind of
"baptism" performed with the blood of a sacrificed bull and
described as such about 400 AD by Prudentius in his Peristephanon
(10.1006-1050).

Neither myth nor ritual offers any warrant for classifying Attis as a
dying and rising deity. There are some scholars who even question the
"divine nature" of the original Phrygian Attis until he was turned into
a "god" much later when imported in Greece and Rome (Lancellotti, page 10-11).

(Sources: see "Cybele" and
"Dying and Rising Gods" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and Attis: Between Myth and History by Maria Lancellotti, pages 1
ff).

Virgin Born?

Yes, some accounts have mother
conceiving by a fruit produced by blood.

Baal was a Canaanite weather and fertility god whose cult was
widespread throughout the entire Levant area of the Middle East. By
itself, baal means "lord" and can refer to other gods,
but when used without qualification it almost invariably refers to Baal-Hadad
("the thundering one"). Baal has long been known from the Old
Testament (see Numbers 25; Judges 6; 1 Kings 18; Hosea 2; Jeremiah 9).
Baal's home was said to be Mount Tsefon, south of Antioch. His sister
and consort was the goddess Anat. He is alternately the son of El and
the son of Dagan. To assume that Baal, Yamm, and Mot were the three
vying sons of El seems to fit better the context of the Baal myths. The
cult of Baal took particular forms based on geographic locales: Baal-Peor,
Baal-Sidon, Baal-Gebal, and others. The Old Testament expression
"the baals" means Baal in these total manifestations.

The excavation of Canaanite cuneiform tablets from 1929 onward at
Ugarit in Syria has provided scholars with a wealth of cultic and
mythological material in which Baal is prominent. The most common
epithets for Baal are "strong one," "rider on the
clouds," and "Baal Prince (of the earth) [ba'al zebul artsi]."
Although there is some disagreement among scholars as to how to sequence
the relevant texts, the overriding theme of the Ugaritic poems that fit
into the cycle is Baal's quest for and attainment of kingship over the
gods, especially his rivals Yamm and Mot.

The story has Baal installing a window in his house and this allows
Mot (which means "death") to enter (cf. Jer 9:21). Baal and
his entourage descend into the belly of the underworld and the earth is
now threatened with sterility because Baal can no longer bring the
rains. In a rage, Anat attacks Mot, cuts him up and sows him in the
fields. The death of Mot allows Baal to revive and bring back fertility.
The encounter between Baal and Mot explains mythologically the
agricultural cycles of fertility and sterility.

The late Bronze Age texts of Ras Shamra narrate the descent into the
underworld of Aliyan Baal ("the one who prevails; the lord")
and his apparent return. Unfortunately, the order of incidents in
several texts is uncertain, and there are several gaps in the narrative.
In the major narrative cycle, Baal is challenged by Mot, ruler of the
underworld, to descend into his realm. After some initial hesitation,
and then copulating with a cow, Baal accepts the challenge and goes down
to the lower realm, where he is said to be "as if dead." After
a gap of forty lines, Baal is reported to have died. Anat descends and
recovers his corpse, which is properly buried, and a successor to Baal
is appointed. Anat seeks out and kills Mot. After another forty-line
gap, El declares, based on a symbolic dream, that Baal still lives.
After another gap, Baal is described as being in combat with a group of
deities. Much depends on the order of incidents. The text appears to be
one of descent to the underworld and return -- Baal is "as if he is
dead" and he then appears to be alive.

In another even more fragmentary cycle, Baal-Hadad goes off to
capture a group of monsters, but they pursue him. In order to escape, he
hides out in a bog where he lays sick for seven years during which the
earth is parched and without growth. Hadad's brothers eventually find
and rescue him. This is a "disappearing-reappearing" narrative
since there is no suggestion of "death and resurrection."

There is no evidence that any of the events in these texts were
ritually reenacted. Nor is there any suggestion of an annual cycle of
death and rebirth. The question whether Aliyan Baal is a "dying and
rising deity" must remain sub judice (Latin for "under
judgment").

(Sources: see "Baal" and
"Dying and Rising Gods" in The Encyclopedia of Religion).

Bacchus is simply a Roman/Latin name for the Greek god Dionysos (or
Dionysus). Apparently Brian Flemming didn't know this since he includes both
in his list. This is an attempt to have two "parallel
pagan" gods for the price of one. See Dionysos
for a complete evaluation of this deity and the comparison to Christ and
Christianity.

Again, I'm not going to spend any time on the next three since they
are either irrelevant, or there is very little documentation on these
pagan gods.

Balder is a Norse deity, a son of Odin, whose mythology dates to the
end of the 11th or 12th century AD:

"The cult of Balder is mentioned only in the late, unhistorical Fridthjof’s Saga; from this source we learn that he had a great sanctuary,
Baldershagi, somewhere in Sogn." (from Norse Mythology, Myths
of the Gods, page 13 on Balder, by Peter Andreas Munch, translated from Norwegian by Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt, NY: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1926)

"The composition of Icelandic literature in general and the writing of sagas began about the close of the eleventh century. Soon after the complete introduction of Christianity in that country (A.D. 1000)."
(from Viking
Tales of the North, translated from the Icelandic by Rasmus B. Anderson, A.M., Professor of Scandinavian Languages in the University of Wisconsin, and Honorary Member of the Icelandic Literary Society,
and "Tegner’s Fridthjof’s
Saga" translated into English by George Stephens, Chicago: S.C.
Griggs, London: Trubner, 1877)

The irrelevance to early Christianity is obvious.
We have a case here of "who lost the keys to the DeLorean" as
apologist J.P. Holding muses (a reference to Back to the Future).
Why Flemming includes this in his list I do not know. Kersey Graves mentions Odin of the Scandinavians (page 30), and
Acharya S mentions Balder and Frey of Scandinavia in her book (page 106) so this may
be the source.

Flemming has already admitted his mistake on this one. "Beddru
of Japan" is found once in Kersey Graves' book (page 30), and once
in Acharya S (page 106) and there is no documentation provided who this
"god" was or is. It may be a corruption or variation of the
name "Buddha" (therefore perhaps Chinese or Indian in origin) but that is just
speculation. In an interview for the "Rational Response Squad"
Flemming admits he should not have included this one:

"You know one thing
that I regret is that though the word Beddru, B-E-D-D-R-U, I never
mentioned anything about that figure in the movie. It's in a background
graphic...where you can really see it. And that's a mistake, that
shouldn't be in there. What I did is I cut and pasted from a list of gods
that I was researching to find out were these true or were they not, and I
should not have put that one on the list. Kersey Graves appears to have
made that up. And so people who say, you know, 'Kersey Graves is full of
crap' and this Beddru thing, he only knows about it, it's probably false,
they're actually right. And I'm going to change that in the second edition
of the DVD." (Hear
Flemming Admit Mistake MP3)

The same goes for this one. The source is Kersey Graves (page 30,
"Deva Tat, and Sammonocadam of Siam") and Acharya S (page 106,
"Codom and Deva Tat of Siam"). No documentation is provided for
"Deva Tat" or "Sammonocadam" or "Codom" of
Siam. J.P. Holding's article ("I
Tawt I Taw a Deva Tat") suggests this may be another variation on
the name Buddha ("A seventh [set of names] is Datta, Dat-Alreya, That-Dalna, Date, Tat or Tot, Deva-Tut or
Deva-Twasta"). If Flemming means "Buddha" why not just say
Buddha. Apparently Kersey Graves and Acharya S think Deva Tat (and
Beddru) is a
distinct deity from Buddha since they include both in their lists.

Dionysos (also spelled Dionysus, the name means
"celebration") is the Greek god of wine and of all liquid elements in nature, including the sap in trees and the blood in young animals. He is often pictured holding a wine cup
(kantharos) and wreathed with ivy (picture right), an evergreen that symbolizes the rebirth of this "twice-born" son of
Zeus (or "Jupiter"). The youngest of the Olympian gods, he is somewhat insecure about
his divine identity because he was conceived in the womb of a mortal
woman, Semele. Again, this is not a "virgin birth" since
"Zeus had many offspring....Zeus had numerous liaisons with both goddesses and mortals. He either raped them, or used devious means to seduce the unsuspecting
maidens." ("Zeus"
in Encyclopedia Mythica). Dionysos' semi-divine status may account for his consistent
interest in mortals and wine drinkers. There are several miracles
involving Dionysos with wine, growth miracles, and others (see the
miracles of Dionysos or here).

The name of the god Dionysos first appears on a clay tablet from the
Greek bronze age, over three thousand years ago and is therefore our
oldest living symbol. The earliest surviving Dionysiac myth is in Homer:
Adriadne is killed by Artemis "on the testimony of Dionysos"
(Odyssey 11.325). The first mention of Dionysos as embodying an
abstract principle is by the philosopher Herakleitos [or Heraclitus], who lived from the
sixth into the fifth century BC. When Christianity was establishing
itself in the ancient Mediterranean world, the cult of Dionysos was its
most geographically widespread and deeply rooted rival (Seaford, pages
3, 4, 76-77, 110).

As the god of masks, Dionysos appears in many forms, but he most
loves to disguise himself as a god of the city, posing as a political
deity and expressing absolute power. His political career begins in the
seventh century BC on the island of Lesbos. Here he appears alongside
Zeus and Hera in the common sanctuary as the god who is an "eater
of raw flesh" (Alcaeus, Fragment 129). Dionysos is a god of contrasts who is at once the patron god of civic drama and a god worshipped in the wilds of nature.

The wild side of Dionysos is often most visible, both in myth and in ritual, and may be explained by his apparent origins in Phrygia
(Near East) or Thebes (Greece), and his connections with Thrace.
He is a god of animal incarnations and transformations, and his rites (orgia) included the tearing apart of
animals
(sparagmos) and eating them raw (omophagia). Dionysos'
subversive character is expressed in his rejection of the sacrificial
system of eating food cooked according to the proper order (roasted then
boiled) in favor of omophagia, the desire to eat raw flesh. The
most extreme form of omophagia is allelophagia, in which
men devour one another, becoming like wild beasts and ferocious animals.
Such behavior allows them to escape from the human condition and get
"outside themselves" by imitating those animals least subject
to domestication.

Dionysos can be found in two parts of Delphi:
in the heights of mount Parnassus, where the members of the Thyiads, the
"Agitated Ones," gather every other year in the Corycian
cavern to honor him in the secret liturgy of the trieteris
("triennial festival"); and in the sanctuary of the Pythia, in
a tomb-cradle beside the golden statue of Apollo, where he waits in
mortal slumber until his servants come to wake him and where the
"Pure Ones," the priests of Apollo, privately offer sacrifice
to him.

Dionysos and Apollo are particularly joined in Orphic
thought and its theogonic discourse, which was wholly at variance with
Hesiod's theology. In the succession of divine ages described in Orphic
theogony, Dionysos is at once the last ruler and the first. In the last
age he appears in the guise of a child who is lured by the Titans with
toys -- a spinning top, a devilish rhombus, and a mirror -- and then
slaughtered and devoured after being first boiled and then roasted. In
being torn apart, scattered abroad, and broken into seven pieces,
Dionysos experiences for himself the effects of the utmost
differentiation, in accord with the process that began after the first
age under the aegis of Phanes-Metis, another name for Dionysos. Apollo
buries the remains of Dionysos' murdered body at the foot of mount
Parnassus, shares the sovereignty of the oracle with the primordial
power Night, and finally becomes the Sun, the greatest of the gods even
to Orpheus himself, rising to the summit of Mount
Pangaeus in Dionysos' Thracian kingdom.

The title Zagreus ("torn") refers to
Dionysos' birth in which the Titans tore him limb from limb when he was a baby.
Apollo took the remains of his body and buried them next to the tripod in his temple at Delphi.
Athena saved his heart and took it to Zeus so Dionysos could be
re-born.

Richard Seaford in Dionysos (2006) summarizes the myth:

"On the prompting of Hera, the
primeval deities known as Titans lure away the infant Dionysos by
means of a mirror and other objects, and tear him into pieces which
they cook and taste. They are punished by being blasted with the
thunderbolt of Zeus. Dionysos is then restored to life from his heart,
which had been preserved by Athena. The smoke rising from the bodies
of the blasted Titans form a soot, from which is created humankind.
This summarises one version of the story, which is told in versions
with differences in detail....The myth of his dismemberment at the
hands of the Titans, followed by his restoration to life, is (at least
in part) a projection of the experience of the mystic initiand...The
result is that not just his death but also his restoration to life
brings him closer to us than are most other deities, and the same can
be said even of the form of this death and restoration, namely
dismemberment (fragmentation) and return to wholeness..."
(Seaford, page 111-112, 85)

In another version of the myth, Semele asks Zeus to grant an unspecified favor, and got him to swear by the river Styx that he would grant it. Unable to break his oath, Zeus came to her armed in his thunder and lightning, and Semele was destroyed. However, Zeus rescued the unborn child from the mother's ashes and sewed
the fetus in his thigh until he was ready to be born. Thus
Dionysos is sometimes called the "twice-born."

There are three ways in which Dionysos' death may be interpreted as
derived from mystery-cult:

the dismemberment of his enemy Pentheus
expresses not just the futility of resistance to the god but also the
idea of the death of the initiand; the idea of Dionysos as a savage
killer (or "man-shatterer" anthroporraistes) on the
island of Tenedos probably derives from this function in mystery-cult;

a secret of mystery-cult was that dismemberment was to be followed
by a restoration to life, and this transition was projected onto the
immortal Dionysos;

this power of Dionysos over death and his
positive role in the ritual makes him a "savior" of his
initiates in the next world (Seaford, page 76 ff).

The crude
dismemberment myth can also be interpreted as riddling allegory:

the
myth signifies the harvesting of grapes in order to make wine, with the
new life of Dionysos signifying that the vine then produces new fruit (Diodorus
3.62.6-7); this interpretation may have been present in the actual
practice of drinking wine in the mystery-cult; or

a more
philosophical and cosmological interpretation attributed to Plutarch (Moralia
389a) to "theologians" that the dismemberment and
reunification of Dionysos is a reference to the alternation of
multiplicity and unity in the cosmos, a Stoic idea; or

various
interpretations of the myth as an allegory referring to the human soul (psuche)
since (e.g. Herakleitos Fragment 36) the passage of the immortal
soul goes through a cycle of bodily death and birth which was a doctrine
of mystery-cult.

"...within the traditional mystic
myth the dismemberment of Dionysos expresses first the imagined bodily
experience of the initiand, then his psychological experience, and
then the state of soul fragmented in the material world, as well as a
transgression (by the Titans) comparable to [the Christian concept] of
'original sin'...." (Seaford, page 118)

Dionysos is frequently associated with underworld deities and
transforms the underworld. On some of the dedicated terracotta plaques (pinakes)
from Lokri in southern Italy, Dionysos appears before the enthroned
Persephone, queen of the underworld, or before her and Hades enthroned
together. In a description of the underworld reported by Plutarch (Moralia
565-6), there is a very pleasant place like "Bacchic caves"
with "bacchic revelry and laughter and all kinds of festivity
and delight. It was here, said the guide, that Dionysos ascended and
later brought up Semele." The Roman poet Horace (Odes
2.19.29-32) imagines the fierce guardian of the underworld, the
three-headed dog Cerberus, gently fawning on the departing Dionysos. He
was brought into relation (sometimes as lakchos) with the
chthonian goddesses of the Eluesinian mysteries, Demeter and Kore. The
funerary gold leaf found at Pelinna in Thessaly (late fourth century BC)
instructs the dead to "say to Persephone that Bakchios himself
freed you." Dionysos is not the ruler of the underworld but
ensures the well-being of the initiate in the underworld. Dionysos'
round trip to the underworld is found in most detail in the plot of
Aristophanes' Frogs.

In more than 150 cities of Asia Minor and the islands, Dionysos
appears in the guide of Bakcheios, the god of the bacchanals
-- those who, like him, have become bakchoi. "Many are
those who carry thyrsi; few are the Bacchants" (Plato Phaedo
69c). To the initiate is reserved the experience of frenzy and
possession, seeing the god face-to-face and sharing his madness and
delirium.

In Ephesus, in the late sixth century BC, the philosopher Heraclitus
denounced those who prowl in the night, the "magi, Bacchants,
and mystics." From the discoveries at Olbia on the shores of the
Black Sea, Dionysos first appears as the initiator in the sixth century,
long before a Scythian king had enrolled in the band of Bacchus (Greek Bakchos)
in this same city, where he was fond of going for aesthetic pleasure a
la grecque ("in the style of the Greeks") even to the extent of becoming a
follower of Dionysos. This initiation was already known to King Scylas
(Herodotus 4.79). What Herodotus implies in his account of Scylas going
through with the initiation (telete) is stated clearly in
Euripides The Bacchae in the voice of Dionysos. The initation
seems to denote an experience in which the Bacchant comes face to face
with his god; he becomes as much a Bacchus as is Dionysos. The lord of
the Bacchanalia refuses to reveal this experience to Pentheus; these are
unspeakable things (arreta) that non-Bacchants may not know
(Herodotus 1.472). At Cumae in the fifth century BC, a similar formula
prohibited entry to a Greek cemetery "save to those who have
been initiated to Dionysos."

In connection with Dionysos the Initiate who, under the name of
Mustes has a temple between Tegea and Argos (Pausanias 8.54.5), we find
esoteric practices and rules of secrecy. Near Mantinea, in a great
ancient chamber known as the megaron, the honey companions (meliastai)
worship Dionysos, a neighbor of Black Aphrodite (Pausanias 8.6.4). At
Brysai, on the slopes of Mount Taigetos in Laconia, only women are
permitted to view the statue of Dionysos, ensconced in an open-air
sanctuary, and the sacrifices they perform are carried out in the
greatest secrecy (Pausanias 3.20.3). Males are also excluded on Lesbos,
at Aigai, and on the island shores of the Atlantic described by
Posidonius. The privilege of experiencing a private, face-to-face
encounter with Dionysos or of being truly "possessed" by him
is restricted to women. The Dionysian "union" is an individual
allegiance that rejects kingship or feudal ties and, in the fluid form
of the private thiasos, creates associations and communities
independent of authority and outside control of the state.

Dionysos is always the lord of dementia and of the ability to get
outside oneself. Dionysos is truly himself only in unyielding madness,
when the mania creates, through murder, a taint, a miasma,
a sickness or pestilence. One must be cleansed of this stain and it is
urgent to escape the plague, for in it appears the contagious power of
those who fall into madness, which affects an entire town or even a
whole country. In the mania of Dionysos is a taint that the god
himself experiences in the course of his life (Apollodorus, Library
3.5.1).

The worship of Dionysos with its formalized mythology, establishes
itself within the sphere of purification called for by the insanity that
the "stranger" carries. Dionysos the Purificator (Lysios) is
the opposite side of the bacchanal, the god who leads men and women
astray in his frenzy. This "dual god" is shown by his pairs of
neighboring temples, at Thebes, Corinth, and Sicyon. The unclean madness
that forms the basis of his cult is always part of him, however
disciplined and civilized Dionysos may seem in the pantheons of cities
unmindful of his fundamental wildness.

As for the similarities between the Dionysos cult and New Testament Christian
faith, Seaford notes in chapter 9 "Christianity" :

"Suffice it to say that although
we know of no mystery-cult that reproduces exactly the same
configuration as the [apostle Paul's] doctrine, we do find in
mystery-cult the ideas of the death and rebirth of the initiand (e.g.
Apuleius Metamorphoses 11.21), of the sufferings of the deity
(e.g. Athenagoras Supplication 32.1), of the identification of
the initiand with deity, and of the initiands' (transition to)
salvation depending on their finding -- or the return to life of -- a
deity (e.g. Lactantius Divine Institutions 18.7; Firmucus
Maternus On the Error of Profane Religions 2.9; 22.1-3)....Dionysos,
like Jesus, was the son of the divine ruler of the world and a mortal
mother, appeared in human form among mortals, was killed and restored
to life. Early Christian writers, aware of the similarity between
Christianity and mystery-cult, claim that the latter is a diabolical
imitation of the former.... (Seaford, page 123-124, 126)

Seaford also talks about the ancient and ubiquitous process of
syncretism in the Mediterranean area (where the Dionysos myth is also equated or
associated with Osiris, Cybele, Serapis, Dysares, Attis,
Sabazios, Mithras, Hekate, Liber, Fufluns, page
128) but states:

"Christianity, on the other hand,
on the whole protected itself from such syncretism, albeit in part by
incorporating into itself elements of other religions. Any
similarities or mutual influence -- in the symbolic structure of
ritual or belief -- between mystery-cult and Christianity should not
blind us to the profound difference in their ethics and organization.
Unlike the (generally nameless) initiates of Dionysos (or Mithras,
etc), early 'Christians' were organized in regulated self-reproducing
communities. The specific identity of the church was thereby
preserved, and this was a factor in the eventually complete victory of
Christianity over pagan mystery-cult....Christianity, an offshoot of
Judaism in a Hellenised world, triumphed by simultaneously adapting to
that world and nevertheless preserving its own organizational
specificity. In doing so, it had to combat the rival appeal of
Dionysos (as well as of other cults) without being entirely immune to
his influence." (Seaford, page 129, 130)

(Sources: see "Dionysos" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and Dionysos [2006] by Richard Seaford, also "Semele" and
"Zeus" in Encyclopedia
Mythica).

Virgin Born?

No, born of a mortal woman but this was not a virgin
birth since Zeus literally "slept with Semele secretly."

Hermes is the son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, born in a cave on Mount
Cyllene in Arcadia. This not a "virgin birth" as Zeus is said to
"impregnate" and "make love" with "furtive
passion." From a young age, Hermes was a skilled thief, lookout,
nocturnal prowler, and bringer of dreams (Homeric Hymn to Hermes
13-15). By noon on the day of his birth, he was playing the lyre which he
invented, and by evening he stole Apollo's herd of sacred cows. Hermes'
thieving reveals the god's precocity and explains the change in the
character of Apollo from shepherd to a god of prophecy and music. Thanks
to Hermes' thefts and tricks, various gods and heroes came out of battle
victorious. Later he obtained the caduceus, a magnificant and opulent wand
that wards off misfortune and carries out divine intentions. Apollo
granted Hermes a kind of prophetic power known to the Fates.

Hermes' world is one of peace and frivolous delight. He likes neither
deadly conflict nor the honors it procures. As a shepherd, he loves high
mountains and spacious pastures. From his breath arise fertility and
fecundity of flocks. A night god, Hermes guides souls and protects
travelers; it is he who silently pours "sleep" into the eyes of
mortals. The lord of roads, Hermes leads souls to the land of the dead. He
alone can accomplish this task because, like Hades, he is both trickery
and darkness. Herald by day and night, Hermes knows no frontiers. Like the
lyre he created, his steps bring men gaiety, love, and gentle sleep.

(Sources: see "Hermes" in The Encyclopedia of Religion
and "Hermes" and "Maia" in Encyclopedia
Mythica).

Virgin Born?

No.

A
"Son of God" ?

Yes, son of Zeus.

A
Savior?

No.

Performed
miracles?

Yes, created the lyre as an
infant, other tricks and powers are noted.

In ancient Egypt several gods are known by this name, but the most
important was the son of Osiris and Isis, identified as king of Egypt.
Horus fought with Seth, and despite losing an eye, was successful in
avenging the death of his father Osiris, becoming his legitimate
successor. Osiris became king of the underworld, and Horus king of the
living. By the fifth dynasty (2498 - 2345 BC), the Horus-king also
became "son of Re" the sun god by personifying mythologically
the entire older genealogy of Horus as the goddess Hathor, or
"house of Horus" who was also the spouse of Re and mother of
Horus.

Horus was usually represented as a falcon, and one view is as a sky
god whose outstretched wings filled the heavens; his sound eye was the
sun, and injured eye the moon. Another portrayal in the Late Period was
as a human child suckling at the breast of his mother, Isis. Some see a
"pagan parallel" here with Catholic portrayals of the Virgin Mary and
Jesus, but mothers with children is common to all cultures, religious or
not. A Catholic Answers tract notes:

"....Fundamentalists [such as Jack Chick comic books, and
Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons] have made much of the fact that Catholic art includes Madonna and Child images and that non-Christian art, all over the world, also frequently includes mother and child images. There is nothing sinister in this. The fact is that, in every culture, there are mothers who hold their children! Sometimes this gets represented in art, including religious art, and it especially is used when a work of art is being done to show the motherhood of an individual. Mother-with child-images do not need to be explained by a theory of diffusion from a common, pagan religious source....One need look no further than the fact that mothers holding children is a universal feature of human experience and a convenient way for artists to represent motherhood."
(see "Is
Catholicism Pagan?")

The two principal cult leaders for the worship of Horus were at
Bekhdet in the north where very little survives, and at Idfu in the
south, which has a large well-preserved temple dating from the Ptolemaic
period (c. 300 - 30 BC). The earlier myths involving Horus, as well as the ritual
performed there, are recorded at Idfu.

Krsna (Krishna) whose name means "black" or
"dark" stands alongside Rama in the Hindu pantheon as one of
two preeminent avataras of the great god Visnu. In a quote from
the Bhagavata Purana, "Krsna is God himself" ("Krsnas
tu bhagavan svayam" 1.3.27), not merely a portion or
manifestation of the divine fullness. In the devotion of contemporary
Hindus, he more than any other figure symbolizes divine love (prema),
divine beauty (rupa), and a quality of purposeless, playful, yet
fascinating action that bears a peculiarly divine stamp. In recent
centuries Krsna has been adored principally as a mischievous child in
the cowherd settlement (Vrndavana) where he launches his earthly career
as a matchless lover of women and girls who dwell there. In earlier
times, heroic and didactic aspects of Krsna's personality have played a
more forceful role in his veneration.

The most important icon of Krsna as the divine lover becomes
prevalent in Orissa and Karnataka in the 12th and 13th centuries AD and
later spreads throughout the subcontinent. A second popular image shows
Krsna taming the evil snake Kaliya (picture right) whose presence had
poisoned the Yamuna River upon whose waters all of Braj, humans and
cattle alike, depend. Child or adolescent, Krsna is always a thief of
the heart.

Many scholars feel that Krsna and Visnu were originally two
independent deities. It is unclear when the two cults merged, but this
certainly happened by the time of Visnu Puranas (c. fifth and
ninth centuries AD) which declares Krsna in both his pastoral and royal
roles to be an avatara of Visnu, although there are indications
it is older. In the considerably later Bhagavata Purana one has a
comparable vision of Krsna's supremacy, but this time the supremacy of
Krsna Gopala is more at issue. Here the playful cowherd dances with all
the milkmaids (gopis) of Braj at once. This amorous dance is an
image of divinity and humanity identified in one another, an absorption
made possible by intense devotion (bhakti).

Krsna is worshipped in homes and temples throughout India and has
become the devotional focus of the Hare Krishnas movement (ISKCON)
beyond Indian shores. Worship consists of a series of eight daily darsans
(ritual "viewings") in which the god allows himself to be seen
and worshipped in image form by his devotees. His clothing, jewelry, and
flower decorations may be altered many times during the course of a day,
and different forms of devotional song are sung as the god's daily cowherding
routine is symbolically observed. In the Braj country surrounding
Mathura, which attracts pilgrims from all over India in festival
seasons, the ceremonial observances are amplified by dramas in which
Krsna makes himself available in an especially vivid manner to his
devotees through child actors. In Sanskrit aesthetic theory, drama is
thought to comprehend all the arts, and Krishna is frequently depicted in Indian
art, dance, and music more than any other god.

As to birth, Krsna was of the royal family of Mathura, and was the eighth son born to the princess Devaki, and her husband
Vasudeva. The previous seven sons were normal conceptions and births, it
was only the eighth that was miraculous.

"With our senses we can perceive some things, but not everything; for example, we can use our eyes to see, but not to taste. Consequently, You are beyond perception by the senses. Although in touch with the modes of material nature, You are unaffected by them. You are the prime factor in everything, the all-pervading, undivided Supersoul. For You, therefore, there is no external or internal.
You never entered the womb of Devaki; rather, You existed there
already." (Srimad Bhagavatam 10.3.15-17)

Here we see the material vs. spiritual antithesis of Hinduism: Krsna
"never entered the womb of Devaki...." but the God was already there in her mind and heart.

And in a commentary on SB 10.2.16-18: "The word
avivesa signifies that the Lord appeared within the mind of Vasudeva. There was no need for a discharge of semen....the fully opulent Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is all-auspicious for the entire universe, was transferred from the mind of Vasudeva to the mind of Devaki. Devaki, having thus been initiated by Vasudeva, became beautiful by carrying Lord Krsna, the original consciousness for everyone, the cause of all causes, within the core of her heart, just as the east becomes beautiful by carrying the rising
moon....As indicated here by the word manastah, the Supreme Personality of Godhead was transferred from the core of Vasudeva's mind or heart to the core of the heart of Devaki. We should note carefully that the Lord was transferred to Devaki not by the ordinary way for a human being, but by
diksa, initiation....The Lord did not need to live within the womb of Devaki, for His presence within the core of her heart was sufficient to carry Him. One is here forbidden to think that Krsna was begotten by Vasudeva within the womb of Devaki and that she carried the child within her womb." (see
"Was Krishna born of a sexless
birth?" -- also "The Story of Krishna"
online at www.SrimadBhagavatam.org
)

This "miraculous birth" is very different from the Christian concept of the virginal
conception and Incarnation of Christ. According to the Bible, Jesus was Mary's first, Mary indeed carried Jesus in her womb for nine months, and Mary was a virgin before and when she gave birth. Catholics, Orthodox, and the original Protestants believe that Jesus also was Mary's one and only son. But I will count this as a "virgin birth" for
Krsna.

The long Indian epic-poem the Mahabharata (Book 16: Mausala
Parva) has an account of Krsna's "resurrection and ascension" to
heaven witnessed by the hunter Jara who mistook him for a deer. The
relevant passage reads thus:

"Having restrained all his senses, speech, and mind, Krishna laid himself down in high Yoga. A fierce hunter of the name of Jara then came there, desirous of deer. The hunter, mistaking
Keshava [Keshava and Keshav are alternate names for Lord Krishna from within Hindu
tradition], who was stretched on the earth in high Yoga, for a deer, pierced him at the heel with a shaft and quickly came to that spot for capturing his prey. Coming up, Jara beheld a man dressed in yellow robes, rapt in Yoga and endued with many arms. Regarding himself an offender, and filled with fear, he touched the feet of Keshava.
The high-souled one comforted him and then ascended upwards, filling the entire welkin with splendour. When he reached Heaven, Vasava and the twin Ashvinis and Rudra and the Adityas and the Vasus and the Viswedevas, and Munis and Siddhas and many foremost ones among the Gandharvas, with the Apsaras, advanced to receive him. Then, O king, the illustrious Narayana of fierce energy, the Creator and Destroyer of all, that preceptor of Yoga, filling Heaven with his splendour, reached his own inconceivable region. Krishna then met the deities and (celestial) Rishis and Charanas, O king, and the foremost ones among the Gandharvas and many beautiful Apsaras and Siddhas and Saddhyas. All of them, bending in humility, worshipped him. The deities all saluted him, O monarch, and many foremost of Munis and Rishis worshipped him who was the Lord of all. The Gandharvas waited on him, hymning his praises, and Indra also joyfully praised him."

The earliest testimony for the complete text of the Mahabharata dates to the first century AD by the Greek sophist Dion Chrysostom, with portions dating to the 6th century BC or earlier.
There are also miracles, magical stories, or holy antics associated with
Krsna as a child and infant in this same epic poem.

(Sources: see "Krsna" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and the Wikipedia articles on Krishna
and Mahabharata).

Mithra (the word means "contract, covenant") is one of the
major deities of ancient Iran (Persia) along with Ahura Mazda and Anahita,
but one that later crossed the borders of the Iranian world to become the
supreme god of a mystery religion popular throughout the Roman empire. In
the Avesta and Zoroastrian literature Mithra turns up frequently. He is
known from many sources: inscriptions of the Achaemenids beginning with
Artaxerxes II (404 - 359 BC); on coins of the Kushan empire he is named as
Mioro and depicted as a solar deity; in Parthian and Sogdian Manichaeism
he is the tertius legatus or "messenger"; in Persian
Manichaeism he appears as the spiritus vivens ("spirit of
life"). The testimony of Plutarch in Life of Pompey is
important in understanding the religion's development in Rome. Plutarch's
source is more ancient (perhaps Posidonius) so the Roman cult can perhaps
be traced to 100 BC. Statius in the Thebais (about 80 AD) describes
an image of Mithra Tauroctonus (the "bull-slayer" picture right)
and attests to the arrival of the cult in Rome itself. This was the
beginning of the wide diffusion of Mithraism that occurred under the
Flavian emperors in the last quarter of the first century AD.

The Mithraic mysteries spread between the end of first century and
the fourth century AD, gradually dying out toward the end of that
period. They spread throughout a great part of the Roman empire: Rome
and Ostia, Latium, southern Etruria, the Campania, and Cisalpine Gaul in
Italy; other sites include the main ports of Sicily; Austria and Germany
along the Rhine; the Danubian provinces; the valley of the Rhone and
Aquitania in France; Belgium; England in the London region; to a lesser
extent in the Iberian Peninsula and Macedonia; and in limited
Mediterranean areas along the Asian and African coasts. For the most
part the evidence is archaeological, iconographic, and epigraphic. The
greatest scholar of Mithraism, Franz Cumont, attempted to reconstruct
the religion's mythology, theology, cosmology, eschatology and rites
based on the numerous sculptural reliefs that have been preserved.

Mithra
is essentially a deity of light; he draws the sun with rapid horses; he
is the first to reach the summit of Mount Hara at the center of the
earth; he shines with his own light in the morning and makes the many
forms of the world visible; he is a divinity both of light and
salvation. In the Iranian world he has a clear significance as a warrior
god, and has the traits of a divinity who ensures rain and prosperity
and protects cattle by providing it ample pasturage. The nature of the
Iranian god as one of salvation can be inferred from myriad indications:
in the Parthian epoch there existed a great syncretic myth of the
Cosmocrator Redemptor, of which Mithra, born of a rock or out of a cave,
was the protagonist. His rock-birth, later celebrated on December 25,
was accompanied by special signs and luminous epiphanies taken as a
symbol of royal initiation.

"The literary sources here are few
but unmistakable: Mithras was known as the rock-born god. The
inscriptions confirm this nomenclature: one even reads D(eo)
O(omipotenti) S(oli) Invi(cto), Deo Genitori, r(upe) n(ato), 'To
the almighty God Sun invincible, generative god, born from the
rock'....Mithras also appears in the archaeological record as the
rock-born god. Many images represent the god growing out of a rock
with both arms raised aloft....After the bull-slaying, the rock-birth
is the most frequently represented event of the myth, either as a
detail on reliefs or, quite commonly, as a free-standing image."
(Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras, page 62-63)

The Mithraeum was a kind of temple which served as a meeting
place for followers of the religion. It was a replica of a cave (spelaeum),
partly underground, in which Mithra caught the mystic bull and killed
it. Built in a long rectangle, it had lateral brick benches where
participants could sit and gaze at the image of Mithra Tauroctonus
("bull-slayer") placed in the special niche at the end of the
cave. Water played a purificatory role in Mithraism, and a natural or
artificial spring had to be near every Mithraeum.

Mithraism was in fact a private cult, esoteric and initiatory in
nature, and intended for only the few. Though it professed universalism,
the cult excluded women. It emerged in a predominantly military
environment so was practiced and spread primarily by the Roman army. It
was not only a soldier's religion since it appealed to other social and
professional groups, public officials, and those involved in commercial
enterprises.

From the total body of evidence we can infer that Mithra's central
act of killing the bull -- in Zoroastrianism the work of Ahriman -- has
a regenerative function: death produces new life, rich and more fecund.
Mithra, the god of light who has saved creation from the threat of
darkness, clasps the right hand of the Sun, and kneels before the
Tauroctonus (bull). Mithraists consecrated the alliance between Mithra
and the Sun through a banquet, which prefigured the ritual. Mithra
reaches the heavens in the Sun's chariot. It is certainly this image of
Mithra that most moved and exalted the initiate, for it renewed hope in
the ascension of the soul beyond the planetary spheres all the way to aeternitas
(in Roman mythology, a personification of eternity).

Manfred Clauss in The Roman Cult of Mithras, chapter 14 "Mithras
and Christ" discusses the relationship between the two religions:

"...the entire discussion is largely
unhistorical. To raise the issue of a competition between the two
religions is to assume that Christians and Mithraists had the same aims.
Such a view exaggerates the missionary zeal -- itself a Christian idea --
of the other mystery cults. None of them aimed to become the sole
legitimate religion of the Roman empire, because they offered an entirely
individual and personal salvation. The alternative 'Mithras or Christ?' is
wrongly framed, because it postulates a competitive situation which, in
the eyes of Mithraists, simply did not exist....We should not simply
transpose Christian views and terms in this area onto other mystery cults.
Most of the parallels between Mithraism and Christianity are part of the
common currency of all mystery cults or can be traced back to common
origins in the Graeco-oriental culture of the Hellenistic world. The
similarities do not at all suggest mutual influence....there are more
substantial parallels at the ritual level, particularly the ritual
meal...." (Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras, page 168-169,
emphasis added)

On the communion or ritual meal, which both St. Justin Martyr (1
Apology 66, c. 150 AD) and Tertullian (c. 200 AD) recognized as similar
to the Catholic Eucharist, Clauss concludes:

"The Mithraists evidently believed
that they were reborn through the consumption of bread and wine. The food
was of course not simply actual or literal food, but also food in the
metaphorical sense, which nourished souls after death: the meal was the
guarantee of their ascension into the undying light. In the case of
these analogies, there can be no question of imitation in either
direction. The offering of bread and wine is known in virtually all
ancient cultures, and the meal as a means of binding the faithful together
and uniting them to the deity was a feature common to many religions.
It represented one of the oldest means of manifesting unification with the
spiritual, and the appropriation of spiritual qualities....In the ritual
meal, Mithras' victory over the bull was celebrated and reproduced. There
can be no doubt that the Christian apologists were quite right about its
importance for the cult of Mithras as a whole....The ritual meal was
probably simply a component of regular common meals. Such meals have
always been an essential part of religious assembly; eating and
drinking together creates community and renders visible the fact that
those who take part are members of one and the same group." (Clauss, The
Roman Cult of Mithras, pages 109, 112-113, emphasis added)

The "bread and wine" (some sources suggest it was
"bread and water" or water mixed with wine) of the Mithraic meal was not
considered the "body and blood" of God (Christ) as it is in
Catholic and Orthodox theology, the early Church Fathers, and the New Testament (1 Cor 10:16-17;
11:27-29; John 6:51ff; Matt 26:26ff). For the development of the
Eucharist doctrine in early Christian and Catholic theology, see This
is My Body: Eucharist in the Early Fathers.

(Sources: see "Mithra" and
"Mithraism" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries by
Manfred Clauss).

Orpheus was a Thracian enchanter around which a religious movement
formed in the sixth century BC that modern historians call Orphism.
There are traditions concerning the birth, life, and descent of Orpheus
into the underworld; his singing among the Thracians; and his tragic
death where he is torn to pieces by a band of women. The amulet of a
"crucified Orpheus" (dated to the 3rd or 4th century AD,
picture right) is now considered a forgery (see below, Orpheus and
Greek Religion by Guthrie [2nd edition 1952, reprint 1993], page
265, note on page 278).

Orpheus, the citharist and enchanter, first appears around 570 BC on
a small black-figured vase. He is shown walking with a determined stride
and nearly surrounded by two Sirens, great angry birds with the heads of
women. Before he becomes the founding hero of a new religion, Orpheus is
a "voice" like no other. Just as birds leave the sky and fish
forsake the sea at the sound of Orpheus' song, so too do Thracian
warriors who come out of the forests. In full Thracian or Oriential
dress, the vases of southern Italy depict Orpheus as he descends into the
underworld, searches for his nymph wife Eurydice, or makes a daring journey to the
heart of the realm of Hades.

Plato summarized the Orphic way of life and its strict rules in the Laws:
do not touch beef, abstain from all meat, and offer the gods only cakes
or fruit soaked in honey, for it is impious and unclean to eat flesh and
to stain with blood the altars of the gods. The Orphics are renunciants
and strive for saintliness. They devote themselves to techniques of
purification in order to separate and cut themselves off from the world
and from all who are subject to death and defilement. They seek to
renounce completely the blood on altars, the eating of any flesh, and in
doing so reject the Greek state's religious system and its
differentiated gods.

The Orphic "gods" are bizarre. To begin, the Firstborn, the
primal Generator and Generatrix, is called variously Phanes, Metis,
Protogonos, or Erikpaios. Descriptions of this deity offer repeated
affronts to the form of the human body: it has two pairs of eyes, golden
wings, the voice of a lion and a bull, and organs of both sexes. There
is Zeus who rules over the fifth generation of gods, and on the advice
of Night, sends the Firstborn straight to the pit of his belly. Thus he
becomes a womb, the shell of an egg whose dimensions are those of the
All. In other tales this god marries his mother and impregnates his
daughter-wife, who is also his mother -- a double incest. The Orphic
cosmogony and theogony contains many baroque deities and polymorphic
monsters. In the beginning was the totality, the oneness of the All, the
completeness of Phanes within the perfect sphere of primordial Night.
The succession of rulers passes from Phanes, via Night, to Ouranos and
Gaia, Kronos and Rhea, and finally to Zeus. Zeus, born of Rhea
(Demeter), marries a second Demeter, and later becomes husband of yet a
third Demeter (Kore) who will give birth to the infant Dionysos.
That Dionysos, who was actually present in the Firstborn, will institute
the sixth and final generation of the gods.

Differentiation of the gods takes place first through sexual
activity, then through marriage, which works toward the separation of
the divine powers. In recasting the gods of others, Orphism gives a
special meaning to the complicity of two rival powers: Dionysos
and Apollo, the two gods who sum up the whole of Greek polytheism. But
Dionysos and Apollo also meet and confront each other in the tragic
biography of Orpheus, in particular the indirect manner in which Orpheus
is slain. Every day at dawn, Orpheus scales Mount Pangaeus, the highest
mountain in Thrace since he wishes to be the first to salute the Sun,
the "greatest of the gods" and to whom he gives the name
Apollo. Dionysos is filled with resentment at this daily ritual so he
sends barbarian women (the Bassarai) to surround Orpheus, seize,
dismember, and tear him to pieces. The instruments of Orpheus' death are
women, the fiercest and wildest representations of the feminine gender
since they appear with skewers, axes, stones, and hooks on Attic vases
between 480 and 430 BC. These are women whom the voice of Orpheus is
powerless to seduce, tame, or restrain.

W.K.C.
Guthrie of Cambridge discusses the "amulet" or "seal"
of a supposed "crucified Orpheus" as follows:

"To this part of the inquiry belongs a mention of the curious and
much-discussed seal or amulet in Berlin. The design on this seal [figure
right] which is dated in the third or fourth centuries A.D., shows a
crucified man. Above the cross are a crescent moon and seven stars, and
across and below it is the legend [Orpheus Bacchus]. This has usually been
supposed to be the work of some Gnostic sect exhibiting a syncretism of
Orphic and Christian ideas. Just as Christ is to be seen in Christian
monuments with the attributes of Orpheus, so here, by a tribute from the
other side, Orpheus is represented in the attitude of Christ." (W.K.C.
Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion, page 265)

First, the date of the amulet is to the third or fourth centuries AD
of the Christian era. Again, this is post-Christianity's founding, not
pre-Christian. Second, the amulet may be the work of a gnostic sect
combining both Orphic and pseudo-Christian ideas, as a tribute to Jesus'
crucifixion. Third, an endnote in the 1952 second edition of Guthrie reads:

"In his review of this book in
Gnomon, 1935, 476, Kern [German collector of the amulet] recants and expresses himself convinced by the expert opinion of J. Reil and R. Zahn [journal
named in Greek] that the [Orpheus Bacchus] gem is a forgery." (Guthrie,
page 278)

For more see the discussion in Guthrie, pages 261-271 on the
relations of Orphism to Christianity. There is no doubt the early
Christians and all in classical Greece were impressed by the personality
and legends of Orpheus, as is attested in the early Christian art of the
Roman Catacombs (Guthrie, page 264). There are several examples of crypto-Christian symbolism in the first three centuries AD especially in
sepulchral art and inscriptions in Asia Minor (page 265). But "if
there is borrowing by Christianity here, it is from the general
religious atmosphere of the age, not from the Orphics" and "of
course all resemblance ceases when we come to details" (pages 267,
268).

(Sources: see "Orpheus" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and Orpheus and Greek Religion by Guthrie, pages 261 ff).

Osiris is the ancient Egyptian god of the dead and
"resurrection" who presided over the judgment of the soul. He is
the oldest son of Geb ("earth" personified) and Nout
("mother of the gods" and goddess of the sky), the husband of
Isis, whose myth was one of the best known and whose cult was one of the
most widespread in pharaonic Egypt. The mythology of Osiris is not
preserved completely from an early date, but the essentials are related by
Plutarch in On Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride).

Osiris became ruler of the land, but was tricked and slain by his
jealous brother, Seth. According to the Greek version of the story, Typhon
(Seth) had a beautiful coffin made to Osiris' exact measurements, and with
72 conspirators at a banquet, promised it to the one who would fit it.
Each guest tried it for size, and Osiris was the one to fit exactly.
Immediately Seth and the conspirators nailed the lid shut, sealed the
coffin in lead, and threw it into the Nile. The coffin was eventually
borne across the sea to Byblos, where Isis, who had been continually
searching for her husband, finally located it.

She returns the body to Egypt where Seth discovers it, cuts the corpse
into pieces, and scatters them throughout the country. Isis transforms
herself into a kite, and with her sister Nephthys, searches for and finds
all the pieces (except the male member, which she replicates),
reconstitutes the body, and before embalming to give Osiris eternal life,
she revivifies it, couples with it, and thus conceives Horus.
According to the principal version of the story cited by Plutarch, Isis
had already given birth to her son, but according to the Egyptian Hymn
to Osiris, she conceived him by the revivified corpse of her husband.
Later Horus avenges his father Osiris' death and succeeds him without
completely destroying Seth.

The popularity of the cult of Osiris is explained by the recurring
cycle of kingship, with each dead king becoming Osiris and being
succeeded by his son, Horus. The cult was also
important because of its emphasis on the "resurrection" of the
god and a blessed afterlife. His true
realm was not of this world, since he sat in perpetual rule over the
dead. The Coffin Texts and the Book of Going
Forth by Day provides the knowledge necessary for any individual to
share in the afterlife of Osiris. This judgment is based on the
protestations of innocence by the individual and a weighing of the
person's heart against the feather of truth (maat). The "resurrection" of the god is also associated with
fertility; pictures and figures of the god sprouting grain have been
found among funerary furnishings. A further aspect of fertility is his
identification with the flooding of the Nile River.

Jonathan Z. Smith in the article "Dying and Rising Gods"
for the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) relates the myth like
this: Osiris is murdered, his body is dismembered and scattered. The
pieces of his body are recovered and rejoined, and the god is
rejuvenated. However, he doesn't return to his former mode of existence
but rather journeys to the underworld where he becomes the powerful
"lord of the dead." "In no sense can Osiris be said to
have 'risen' in the sense required by the dying and rising pattern; most
certainly it was never conceived as an annual event." The
repeated formula "Rise up, you have not died," whether applied
to Osiris or a citizen of Egypt, signaled a new, permanent life in the
realm of the dead. Osiris was considered the mythical prototype for the
distinctive Egyptian process of mummification. The descriptions of the
recovery and rejoining of the pieces of his body are all elaborate
parallels to funerary rituals: the vigil over the corpse, the hymns of
lamentation, the embalmment, washing and purification of the corpse,
dressing of the body, pouring out of libations, etc. The individual
Egyptian dead became identified with and addressed as "Osiris"
(earliest in the Pyramid Texts 167a - 168a). Iconographically, Osiris is
always depicted in mummified form; he is a powerful god of the potent
dead. "In no sense can the dramatic myth of his death and
reanimation be harmonized to the pattern of dying and rising gods."
(Smith, volume 4, page 524-525)

In an analysis of a debate on this topic, Richard Carrier says: "....I am not sure I understand [the] longwinded focus on the Osiris myth in the first place. This is easily the least persuasive parallel with Christianity among extant religions of the day. There are far more convincing cases for a pagan belief in a physical resurrection."
(see "Osiris and Pagan Resurrection Myths: Assessing the
Till-McFall Exchange")

Skeptic and classical historian Richard Carrier (featured in
Flemming's DVD) says Osiris minimally fits the "dying and rising
god" pattern while religious scholar
Jonathan Z. Smith rejects that idea, and other scholars insist on calling Osiris
not only a god of the dead, but a "god of resurrection."
Bojana Mojsov in Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God (Oxford
Blackwell, 2005) explicitly calls him "God of the resurrection
who presided over the judgment of the soul." (page xvi-xvii).

(Sources: see "Osiris" and
"Dying and Rising Gods" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God by Mojsov).

Virgin Born?

No.

A
"Son of God" ?

Yes, if Geb is considered a
deity (Osiris is the oldest son of Geb).

A
Savior?

No.

Performed
miracles?

No.

Communal
Meal of Bread/Wine?

No.

Crucified?

No.

Resurrected?

Yes and No, depends how you
interpret revivification. Scholars disagree.

Tammuz is the Akkadian name for Dumuzi, an ancient Sumerian god whose
cult is attested from 3500 BC to as late as the Middle Ages. A month was
named after him, and its Akkadian form was borrowed with other month
names into the Jewish calendar. Dumuzi is a type of "dying
god" of fertility and vegetation, and into him merged a great
number of originally independent fertility deities. The syncretistic
nature of Dumuzi shows in litanies that formed part of the laments for
him: they list as names Ninazu, Damu, Ningishzida, Alla, Lugalshudi,
Ishtaran, Lusiranna, and Amaushumgalana. Even included are names of all
the kings of the third dynasty of Ur and of Isin, who embody him in the
rite of the Sacred Marriage.

Dumuzi is generally visualized as a young man or boy. Under some
aspects he is of marriageable age; in others a mere child. He is dearly
loved by the women who surround him -- his mother, sister, and later young
bride -- and there is reason to assume his cult was predominantly a
women's cult. The laments for him are by his mother, sister, and widowed
bride, never by a father (cf. Ezekiel 8:14). The love for Dumuzi is for
what he is rather than anything he might have done or achieved. He is
being married, pursued, killed; he does not influence others by action,
only by what he is: beloved or prey.

Several images of Dumuzi under which the god could appear include the
following:

Dumuzi as Amaushumgalana -- "the one great source of
the date clusters," refers to the single, huge bud the date
palm sprouts annually. The cult of this aspect was centered in Uruk.
It was a happy cult, knowing only the Sacred Marriage rite, not
death and lament.

Dumuzi the shepherd -- "producer of healthy young
ones" and characterizes the power to produce healthy,
well-formed offspring, specifically healthy lambs. This cult and
mythology comprised his wedding feast but also his death and lament.
His death was caused by mountain bandits attacking his camp.

Dumuzi of the beer -- in the relevant myths, Geshtinanna
seeks her brother who is being readied for a festival or is in the
brewery with wise masters. In one text his ghost asks that beer be
brewed with certain red tubers into which Dumuzi's blood had turned
(note: blood to beer, not wine to blood) when it spilled on the
ground as he was killed. Ostensibly the beer will revive him.

Damu the child -- an earlier form of the word dumu
means "child." Damu was envisaged as a young child who had
escaped from his nurse and was sought by his mother. He was
eventually found coming down the river. He represents the power
making sap rise in plants and trees in spring with the coming of the
flood of the river. His nurse was a tree; his mother, a cedar
goddess. Its cult was also centered in Uruk.

Damu the conscript -- this form existed in Girsu (Tello) on
the lower Euphrates, a settlement of prisoners of war conscripted
into the army as soldiers or labor troops. This Damu is a young boy,
unmarried, the sole support of his mother and sister. His death
occurs when a detachment of recruiters take him away, he attempts to
escape, only to be caught for good or killed. The motif, with its
dramatic chase, made its way into many myths dealing with Dumuzi the
shepherd, where it does not belong. The Sumerian shepherd was
an aristocrat with servants helping out with the work in the fold.
The chase of a conscript by military police belongs on a much
lower social level, in the world of serfs of the crown, not free
citizens.

The assessment of the Akkadian Tammuz or the Sumerian Dumuzi as a
"dying and rising god" has varied in the scholarly literature
more than any other deity. Sumeriologist Samuel Noah Kramer revised his
judgment three times (before 1950 he thought Dumuzi freed from death;
between 1950 - 1965 he was considered solely a dying god; since 1966 he
was willing to speak of "death and resurrection"). The ritual
evidence is unambiguously negative. During the summer month of Tammuz,
there was a period of wailing and lamentation for the dead deity. In
third-century AD Christian authors we see the figure of Tammuz
interacting with Adonis of Asia Minor. In all the
varied reports, it is a relentlessly funereal cult. The young Tammuz is
dead, and mourned. His life was the shoot of a tender plant; it grows
quickly and then withers away. There is no evidence for any cultic
celebration of a rebirth of Tammuz apart from late Christian texts where
he is identified with Adonis.

Despite the lack of cultic evidence, some scholars supposed that the
period of mourning for Tammuz must have been followed by a festival of
rejoicing. This speculative conclusion seemed to gain support with the
publication of the Akkadian Descent of Ishtar (see Inanna
or Ishtar of the Sumerians / Akkadians). The text narrates the descent of the goddess into the underworld
and her return. The concluding nine lines of the text contain a series
of enigmatic references to Tammuz, Ishtar's youthful lover, in the land
of the dead. Although the text nowhere mentions it, scholars supposed
that the purpose of Ishtar's descent was to "bring Tammuz up."
If so, this would place Tammuz securely within the dying and rising
pattern.

Even on the basis of the Akkadian text alone, this interpretation is
unlikely. There is no connection stated between Ishtar's descent and
Tammuz. More detrimental to the dying and rising hypothesis are the
actions performed on Tammuz which belong to elements of a funeral
ritual. Ishtar is treating Tammuz as a corpse. Finally, the line
rendered "on the day when Tammuz comes up" could refer to
Tammuz simply greeting Ishtar in the underworld (i.e. coming up to her)
or is a reference to the month of Tammuz. In the Akkadian version,
Tammuz is dead and remains so. This understanding is witnessed in other
Akkadian texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (6.46 - 50) where
the hero insults and scorns Ishtar, reminding her that all her previous
lovers, including Tammuz who heads the list, have died as a result of
their relationship to her.

With the publication of the Sumerian prototype of the Akkadian text, Inanna's
Descent to the Netherworld (Inanna is the
Sumerian form of Ishtar) and the closely related Death of Dumuzi,
these early texts made clear that the goddess did not descend to the
realm of the dead to rescue her consort. Rather it was her descent that
was responsible for his death.

(Sources: see "Dumuzi" and
"Dying and Rising Gods" in The Encyclopedia of Religion).

Thor is the most popular
god of the ancient Scandinavian peoples. The spread of his cult is
abundantly documented in onomastic evidence (place and proper names).
His name is found all over present-day Scandinavia in place-names
designating either cult sites or places dedicated to him such as woods,
fields, hills, brooks, and lakes. Equally abundant are personal names
with Thor- as the first component. About one-fourth of the immigrants to
Iceland had such names, according to Landnamabok. The Vikings venerated
him as their most powerful god and honored him in their new settlements.
Local sources report the worship of Thor by the Norse Invaders of
Ireland; Thor's hammer, Mjolinir, appeared on the coinage of the
Scandinavian rulers of York in the tenth century AD; there was
apparently a temple dedicated to Thor by Varangian Northmen in Kiev in
1046; the Danes settling in Normandy are said to have invoked "Tur."

Artifacts such as Thor's hammer amulets bear witness to the strength
and survival of his worship even some time after the conversion to
Christianity (eleventh century AD). When Adam of Bremen visited the temple
of Uppsala in the eleventh century, he noticed that although a triad of
gods -- Odin, Thor, Freyr -- was worshipped there, Thor occupied the
central position "because he was the most powerful of them all."

"The [Norse] mythology was orally transmitted in the form of poetry and our knowledge about it is mainly based on the Eddas and other medieval texts written down during and after Christianisation."
("Norse
Mythology" from Wikipedia.org)

So we are talking the second millennium AD, again Back to the
Future syndrome. What does this mythology have to do with early
Christianity?

(Sources: see "Thor" in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
and the Wikipedia articles on Thor and
Norse Mythology).

Zoroastrianism is one of the most ancient living religions, and takes
its name from its founder Zoroaster (or Zarathushtra) who probably lived
around the beginning of the first millennium BC. It is the most
important and best-known religion of ancient (pre-Islamic) Iran. Another
name for Zoroastrianism is Mazdaism, derived from the name of the
religion's supreme god, Mazda (meaning "wise") or Ahura Mazda
("wise lord").

The roots of the religion can be located in an eastern and south
central Iranian, tribal, and basically pastoral society and developed
further under the first Persian empire. Attempts have been made to
distinguish between various phases: the religion contained in the Gathas
or texts attributed to Zarathushtra himself are called "Zarathushtrianism";
the contents of the younger Avesta (partial texts from the 4th or 6th
century AD) is called "Zarathushtricism"; and the religion of
the later Sasanid period (3rd to 7th century AD) is called
Zoroastrianism. These definitions can be extended to include the
religion of the Zoroastrian communities in Iran and India today.

The primary innovation of Zoroastrianism which sets it apart from the
religions of other Indo-European peoples in the Near East and Central
Asia is its emphasis on monotheism (one God). Its outstanding feature
resides in its radical dualism. Both aspects are fundamental to
Zarathushtra's philosophical and religious doctrine, and because of his
high esteem for speculation, the Greeks saw him more as a wise man than
as founder of a religion. Monotheism and dualism are closely linked in
the Gathas, and its purpose is to explain the origins of evil.
The basis of dualism is essentially ethical: the nature of the two
opposing Zoroastrianism spirits, Spenta Mainyu ("beneficent
spirit") and Angra Mainyu ("hostile spirit"), who are
twin children of Ahura Mazda, results from the choice they made between
"truth" (asha) and the "lie" (druj),
between good thoughts, words, deeds and evil thoughts, words, deeds. The
choices made by the two spirits (Yasna 30.5) act as a prototype
of the choices that man faces (Yasna 30.2, 49.3). The concept of
Ahura Mazda as the creator of heaven and earth, day and night, light and
darkness (Yasna 44.3-5), as well as the ethical context in which
Zarathushtra conceived his answer to the problem of evil, demonstrates
that the prophet was an original thinker and powerful religious figure
who introduced radical changes to the spiritual and cultural world in
which he was reared.

Halfway between a prophetic and monotheistic type of religion,
Zoroastrianism incorporates elements and beliefs that also belonged to
the great monotheistic religions that arose to the west of the Iranian
world, and has persisted through thousands of years of Iranian history.
It is a complex religious tradition, based on an ethical approach, and
tends toward abstraction. Zarathushtra's creator god Ahura Mazda reveals
that the prophet was a great religious reformer, a wise man in search of
knowledge and enlightenment, rather than a follower of any traditional
doctrine.

(Sources: see "Zoroastrianism" in The Encyclopedia of Religion).

Virgin Born?

No.

A
"Son of God" ?

No, not a god at all, but
prophet and founder of the religion. The god is called Mazda.

The "mysteries" signify the secret cults of Greco-Roman
antiquity permeated by Orientalism (see "Mystery Religions,
Greco-Oriental" volume 10 in the New Catholic Encyclopedia
[2003, 2nd edition] ). They form two groups: (1) Autochthonous Greek
cults -- in Roman times only those of Eleusis and Dionysos
[or Dionysus], with Orphism as a branch of the
latter; and (2) Oriental cults, with only the Phrygian (Attis)
and Egyptian (Osiris) cults developing into the
complete form of a mystery religion, whereas the Syrian Adonis
cult did not reach this stage. The question is whether the mysteries, in
respect to origin, can be thought of as a whole. The answer must be
affirmative, except for Orphism and Mithraism,
which were artificial creations. The mysteries of Mithras
have their own ideology and history. (NCE, volume 10, page 85-86)

The basic traits of the pagan mystery religions are summarized by
Nash, in The
Gospel and the Greeks, page 112-115 :

central to the mysteries was the annual vegetation cycle where
life is renewed each spring and died each fall; the cults found
symbolic and spiritual significance in the natural process of
growth, death, decay, and rebirth;

many mystery religions involved secret ceremonies, sometimes in
connection with an initiation rite, with esoteric knowledge revealed
to the participant;

a basic element was a myth in which the deity dies or
"disappears" (and then "returns" or
"revives" or "reappears" or is
"restored") and otherwise triumphs
over enemies;

unlike the early Christians, the mysteries had little use for correct doctrine,
dogma, or belief; they
were primarily concerned with the emotional state of their followers
and appealed to the imagination;

the immediate goal was a mystical or religious experience in order
to achieve union with their god, or otherwise some kind of
"salvation" of the soul or immortality or deification.

The
Greco-Roman pagan religions found bodily resurrection difficult to
accept. Man was regarded as a body with a soul, but it was the
soul that was often believed to survive death. The dissolution of the
body was regarded as inevitable (see "Resurrection, Greco-Oriental"
volume 12 in
the NCE). This view of man is quite different
from the Old Testament where man is regarded as an
"animated" body (a unity of body and soul, not a duality
cf. Genesis 2:7; Ecclesiastes 3:20-21; 12:7; and Matthew 10:28; 1 Thess
5:23; etc).
Accordingly, Greco-Roman ideas on "resurrection" were quite
different from the Christian concept (1 Cor 15; John 5:27-30; Phil
3:20-21; Revelation 20; etc).

"The chief Greek god who was
believed to die and live again was Dionysus [or Dionysos], and he was
recognized to be
of non-Greek origin. When he was introduced into the Orphic
Mysteries...the result was belief in transmigration [of souls], not
resurrection in the proper sense. In the later mystery religions,
resurrection was often referred to, but only in a metaphorical
sense....Gods who were believed to have died and been re-born were more
common in the Near East...." (NCE, volume 12, page 145)

The NCE article points out striking differences between the
Christian and the Oriental beliefs: several "dying gods" were associated with
the annual death and rebirth of vegetation; most of these gods were
associated with a "goddess" who mourned her favorite's death
and assisted his "resurrection" (Tammuz with Ishtar,
Osiris
with Isis, Adonis with Aphrodite, Attis with Cybele, etc); finally, with its
strong moral emphasis the fully developed Christian doctrine is quite
unlike the so-called "pagan parallel" religions.

The difference between the pagan "dying gods" and the meaning of Jesus' death are clear. Nash, The
Gospel and the Greeks, page 160-161 states:

none of the so-called "savior-gods" died for someone
else; Jesus Christ the Son of God died in place of His creatures (1
Cor 15:3-4; Romans 5:6-8; 1 John 2:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 Tim 2:4-6)
which is unique to Christianity;

only Jesus died on the cross for sin, the pagan gods are never claimed to die
for sins; they were not crucified (there are in fact NO "crucified
saviors" other than Jesus) but died violently by other means
(self-emasculation; hunting accident; ripped apart by wild boars or
the Titans or crazed women or jealous brothers; etc);

Jesus died once for all (Heb 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14); many of the
pagan gods were vegetation deities whose repeated death and
"rebirth" depicted the annual cycle of nature; it is a
mythical drama with no historical ties;

the early Christian church believed its proclamation of Jesus'
one-time death upon the cross and bodily resurrection is grounded
upon what actually happened in history ("we are witnesses of
these things" cf. Acts 1:1-4; 1:8; 2:32; 3:15; 5:32;
10:39-41; Luke 1:1-4; 24:48; 1 John 1:1-3; 2 Peter 1:16).

Jesus' death was not a defeat but a triumph (1 Cor 15:54-58;
Col 2:14-15; 2 Tim
1:10).

In the Catholic liturgical calendar, September 14 is the "Feast of the
Triumph of the Cross" and was observed in Rome before the end of the seventh
century AD. This day is also called the Exaltation of the Cross, the
Elevation of the Cross, Holy Cross Day, Holy Rood Day, or Roodmas. The liturgy of the Cross is a
triumphant liturgy.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up the Christian
meaning of the death of Christ:

1008. Death is a consequence of sin. The Church's Magisterium, as authentic interpreter of the affirmations of Scripture and Tradition, teaches that death entered the world on account of man's sin. Even though man's nature is mortal God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin. "Bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned" is thus "the last enemy" of man left to be conquered. (cf. Genesis 2:17; 3:3; 3:19; Wisdom 1:13; 2:23-24; Rom 5:12; 6:23; 1 Cor
15:26; Vatican II GS 18 : 2)

1009. Death is transformed by Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, also himself suffered the death that is part of the human condition. Yet, despite his anguish as he faced death, he accepted it in an act of complete and free submission to his Father's will. The obedience of Jesus has transformed the curse of death into a
blessing. (cf. Mark 14:33-34; Heb 5:7-8; Rom 5:19-21)

1010. Because of Christ, Christian death has a positive
meaning: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." "The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him." What is essentially new about Christian death is this: through Baptism, the Christian has already "died with Christ" sacramentally, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ's grace, physical death completes this "dying with Christ" and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act (cf. Phil
1:21-23; 2 Tim 2:11) :

"It is better for me to die in (eis) Christ Jesus than to reign over the ends of the earth. Him it is I seek
-- who died for us. Him it is I desire -- who rose for us. I am on the point of giving birth....Let me receive pure light; when I shall have arrived there, then shall I be a man."
(St. Ignatius of Antioch, to the Romans 6:1-2, on his way to
martyrdom, c. 110 AD)

Pointing out the differences above is sufficient to show the
uniqueness of Christianity and distinguish its theology from the
non-Christian pagan religions.

Now let's summarize Nash's concluding section
on Christian faith and the
Mystery Religions which makes the following points why early
Christianity is not dependent on the various pagan cults:

The arguments of the "syncretist case" illustrates the
logical fallacy of first cause: mere coincidence or similarity does
not prove dependence or causal connection;

Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mystery
religions are either exaggerated or simply false; there are no other
crucified and resurrected saviors besides Jesus
Christ;

The chronology is wrong: almost all of our sources of information
for supposed Christian "parallels" with pagan religions
are very late (i.e. post-Christian); these include Adonis
(2nd to 5th century AD); Attis (5th century
AD); Mithras (late 1st century AD and
beyond); the "crucified" Orpheus
amulet (3rd or 4th century AD, but probably a fake); the
"resurrection and ascension" of Krishna
(the complete text known from the 1st century AD); this is too late for
the New Testament writers themselves to have been influenced by such
accounts;

the full development of the mystery religions occurred in
the 2nd century and later (with the exception of the Greek Dionysos)
and we must distinguish between the
different forms of the cults; the later forms are not necessarily
present in the earlier forms;

The apostles would not have borrowed from the pagan religions
since their training and background was in Judaism (Phil 3:5); they
rejected the alien speculations of syncretism and gnosticism (Col
2:7-8; 1 Tim 4:1-5; 1 John 4:1-6);

any genuine parallels that exist
reflect an ascendant Christian influence on the dying pagan systems;
furthermore, since Jesus, His apostles, and many of their first
disciples were all Jews, Christianity's doctrinal
roots, rituals, and liturgy lay in Judaism not
paganism;

Christianity is a monotheistic religion (one God) and an exclusive faith
(John 14:6; Acts 4:12) with a definite body of doctrine (the Holy Trinity, the
Incarnation of Christ, the sacraments, one revelation from God
through Christ to His apostles passed on through Scripture and
Tradition, an apostolic succession and hierarchy of bishops to safeguard that doctrine, etc);

The religion of the apostles and their successors was grounded in
events that actually happened in history at a particular place and
time (the life, death, burial,
and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth); the mysticism and mythology of the mystery cults was
essentially non-historical.

Jonathan Z. Smith in his book Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison
of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (1990)
concludes:

"...it is now held that the
majority of the gods so denoted appear to have died but not
returned; there is death but no rebirth or resurrection. What evidence
was relied on by previous scholarship for the putative resurrection
can be shown, it is claimed, to be based on a misinterpretation of the
documents, or on late texts from the Christian era (frequently by
Christians) which reveal an interpretatio Christiana of another
religion's myths and rituals, or a borrowing of the Christian motif,
at a late stage, by the religions themselves...." (J. Z. Smith, Drudgery
Divine,
page 101)

"While these negative conclusions
have not been without challenge by scholars of Late Antiquity [see
especially the more recent The Riddle of Resurrection by T.N.D.
Mettinger (2001) ]....[they] represent a genuine reversal in scholarly
thought. That which was posited as most 'primitive' -- a myth and
ritual pattern of 'dying and rising' deities ultimately based on human
sacrifice or ritual murder in relation to the fertility of vegetation
-- has turned out to be an exceedingly late third or fourth century
[AD] development in the myths and rituals of these
deities....[scholars] ignoring their own reiterated insistence, when
the myth and ritual complex appeared archaic, that analogies do not
yield genealogies, they now eagerly assert what they hitherto denied,
that the similarities demonstrate that the Mediterranean cults
borrowed from the Christian." (J. Z. Smith, Drudgery
Divine,
page 103-104, emphasis added)

Bruce Metzger, the great New Testament scholar and textual critic, is
cited by Ronald Nash on this "reversal" :

"It must not be uncritically
assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is
not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence
moved in the opposite direction....Unlike the deities of the
Mysteries, who were nebulous figures of an imaginary past, the Divine
Being whom the Christian worshiped as Lord was known as a real Person
on earth only a short time before the earliest documents of the New
Testament were written." (Metzger in Nash, The Gospel and
the Greeks, page 187, 186, emphasis added)

This leads us to Part 2 on
the historical evidence for Jesus and the reliability of the New
Testament.

The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire by Roger
Beck (Oxford Univ Press, 2006)The Roman Cult of Mithras: the god and his mysteries by Manfred
Clauss (Routledge, 2000)The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries by David Clansey (Oxford Univ
Press, 1989)The "Mithras Liturgy" by Marvin W. Meyer (Scholars Press
for SBL, 1976)

Osiris

Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God by Bojana Mojsov (Oxford
Blackwell, 2005)A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses by George Hart (Routledge,
1986, 2005)Reflections of Osiris: Lives from Ancient Egypt by John Philip Ray
(Oxford Univ Press, 2002)Handbook of Egyptian Mythology by Geraldine Pinch (ABC-CLIO,
2002)Who's Who in Egyptian Mythology by Anthony S. Mercatante (Clarkson
Potter, 1978)

Attis: Between Myth and History by Maria Grazia Lancellotti
(Brill, 2002)In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele by Lynn
E. Roller (Univ of CA Press, 1999)Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult by Maarten J. Vermaseren
(Thames and Hudson, 1977)

The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New
Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? by Ronald Nash (P & R, 1992, 2003)The Riddle of Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the
Ancient Near East by T. N. D. Mettinger (Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001)Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the
Religions of Late Antiquity by Jonathan Z. Smith (Univ of Chicago
Press, 1990)